Georgia State University professor Christopher Basler recently received a two-year, $419,100 federal grant to study a virus similar to the Ebola virus that causes disease in animals but not in humans.
Basler, director of the university’s Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Microbial Pathogenesis, will join a colleague from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in using the grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health to study Reston ebolavirus.
Researchers said Ebola virus and Reston virus are two of the five different Ebola species, with Reston virus being the most different from the rest.
Reston virus was initially discovered during an outbreak in monkeys that were brought to an animal facility in Reston, Virginia, from the Philippines, authors said, noting the monkeys developed a hemorrhagic disease, which investigators found was similar to Ebola virus.
People who were in contact with the animals were monitored closely and showed evidence of being exposed to the virus, but no one became ill. The virus has also been found in pigs.
“We’re trying to better understand how the virus grows, the mechanisms by which it replicates and how the disease that it causes in animals differs from what you see with Ebola virus,” Basler said. “I would argue that if you have different but similar viruses that cause different types of disease or have different capacities to cause disease if we can understand what’s different, then maybe that would suggest ways to reduce the severity of the disease.”